Brex vs Navan pricing and when the Brex and Navan partnership beats picking one

The two price in opposite places. Brex gives the software away on Essentials and earns on card interchange, then charges a processing fee on each trip you book through Brex Travel. Navan gives booking away, because hotels and airlines pay it a commission, and charges for expense management by the number of people who actually submit something each month.

Take a US company of 60 people. Forty of them submit at least one expense a month, twenty travel, and together they book about $180,000 of trips a year across roughly 360 trips. That is a normal profile for a sales-led business at this size.

On Navan, booking costs nothing, and expenses cost 35 paid users at $15 for twelve months, about $6,300 a year. If all 60 people expensed something every month, that would rise to $9,900, which is the meter to watch.

On Brex Essentials, the software costs $0, but 360 trips each carry a processing fee Brex does not publish, so the travel line is a number you only get from Brex. Brex Premium, which adds custom policies and deeper controls, comes to $8,640 a year for 60 users before any trip fees.

So on published numbers Navan is usually cheaper for a company that travels a lot, and Brex Essentials is cheaper for a company that mostly spends on software, ads and suppliers. Ask Brex for the per-trip fee in writing and multiply it by last year's trip count. That one figure decides the comparison more often than any feature list.

BrexPay for Navan puts Brex cards inside Navan. Announced in October 2024, it pays each Navan booking with its own Brex virtual card, so every charge is tied to one traveler and one trip and the travel report reconciles to the card statement without matching by hand. You switch it on from the Navan dashboard with Navan Expense enabled, and expense sharing lets Navan read your other Brex transactions too.

It is the better answer when you already hold Brex cards and want Navan's free booking, or when finance likes Brex for everyday spend but travelers prefer Navan's app. Two things to know first. Brex's support page does not say whether it costs extra, so ask. And disconnecting the link later stops pending Navan trips paid on Brex cards from working, so treat it as a decision you mean to keep.

Ramp is the name that usually joins this shortlist. Its Free plan is $0, Plus is $15 per user a month plus a platform fee, and Ramp says its travel booking has no platform or booking fees on any tier. Like Brex, its controls work on its own card. If you are weighing all three, our Navan vs Ramp and Ramp vs Brex comparisons work through each pair.

Pick Brex if most spend is software, ads and suppliers rather than trips, you qualify for its card, and you have people spending in other countries.

Pick Navan if travel is a big share of spend, you are under 300 employees, or you want to keep an existing Amex or bank card through Navan Connect.

Run both through BrexPay for Navan if you already hold Brex cards and the travelers want Navan.

Look elsewhere if Brex declines you and Navan's meter would climb past what you pay now. The Brex alternatives and Navan alternatives pages cover the rest of the field, and our Teampay alternatives comparison prices them at 50 and 150 users.

Brex and Navan both enforce policy one charge at a time. A $450 hotel inside the cap goes through, and so do the next eleven. What neither watches well is the department total across a month: a dozen trips, each in policy, that put sales 40 percent over its travel budget by the 20th. Booking the flight is also the easy part of a sales trip. Lining up the meetings at the other end is the work, and that is where an AI assistant that schedules your meetings earns its keep.

SpendNotify covers the budget side. It reads every charge on the Brex, Navan or Amex cards you hold, through forwarded bank transaction emails, an iPhone Shortcut for Apple Pay, or a CSV, OFX or QFX statement, and alerts the budget owner by email, Slack or webhook while the month is still open. It does not book travel or issue cards, so it sits next to whichever one you choose. See how budget alerts work, or compare travel and expense management software more broadly.